Chapter 1:

"She won't go to the hospital," he gave a harsh whisper into the receiver. "I can't force her, but she's definitely hurt. There was blood everywhere and her clothes were ripped to shreds. " There was a long pause as the person exasperated important information at the other end of the line. "About that… I tried to talk her out of it, but she's in the shower now."

Sonny hung up with the phone fighting the temptation to make a long series of endless but inevitably necessary phone calls. Lulu had made the rules pretty clear. No cops, no family, and under absolutely no circumstances was he to call Dante. The one phone call he made was going to be betrayal enough of this newly embedded trust born from crisis.

She immerged to the top of the staircase fully incased in sweats and her hair dripping water rather than blood. The cleanliness of her flesh highlighted every bruise and scar. There was a large slash mark starting at the top of her left jaw down her neck and ended between her cleavage that wasn't visible until the blood had be washed away. Sonny couldn't take his eyes off it as she descended the stairs with her arms clung together in front of her.

"I called Elizabeth," he blurted. Her eyes instantly popped to his and her mouth tightened. "She's a nurse, and she's been….too…"

"I don't want to see anybody. I just needed to shower and a place to stay tonight. If that's too much of a problem I can go somewhere else. There's a motel a couple blocks away…" She spoke at rapid tempo, firm in her words, but her voice still shook.

"No. Don't do that. Just let her take a look and maybe she can help with that cut."

It wasn't that he had presented a particularly convincing argument but the sheer exhaustion that prompted her to just go upstairs and wait. Not half an hour later her former sister-in-law showed up with a large bag and a wary look.

"I wish you wouldn't have showered. There could have been some DNA evidence," she announced mid-examination after several minutes of silence. "You know…That's exactly what your Aunt Bobbie said to me after I was raped. She tried to get me to talk about it, to talk to my Gram, to talk to the cops, but I wouldn't have any of it. I just wanted everything to go away. That's probably how you're feeling right now too." She paused to get a reaction, but Lulu's eyes hadn't left the door since she closed it behind her to give them privacy. "I know how badly you probably just want it all to stop, and all you can feel is it happening over and over again. Hiding away here at Sonny's and avoiding your family isn't going to help that. In the end Bobbie was right about everything. I couldn't even admit I had been raped at the time. Your family got me through that. Bobbie, and especially Lucky. He would understand Lulu." She became more persistent and hardly noticed when Lulu had stopped looking at the door and started to stare at her with completely contempt.

"Go away, Elizabeth," she stated coldly. "Just leave."

Elizabeth packed up the bag and quickly made her exit to find Sonny standing next to the door. "What were you thinking?" He demanded in the same tone that he had used on the phone. "She's just been hurt and here you are pressuring her…"

"I just didn't want her to make the same mistakes I did. To go through what I did. She…"

"That's not why you're here. You're here to make sure she's okay physically. I thought you'd be more sensitive."

"She needs…"

"She'll decide what she needs. This was obviously a mistake. You should leave." He waited to hear her footsteps head down the stairs and out the door. "She's gone," he announced.

Author's Note: Thanks for responding. I didn't think people would be interested in this story.